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Show j " AMERICAN TIN PLATE. ' ' t t Enllglitennienf on This New Industry About to Ha .tubll.hjd. , Some time ago samples of American i tin plate were Bent to certain. English journals, asking them to notice this new l American industry in their columns. It was thought it would be a matter of in-1 in-1 terest to them and their readers to know 1 that we were already making tia plato, ' although the now duty would not go into effect for months to come. A recent re-cent mail brings the London Financial Times, with a "notice" in the shape of a column of labored sarcasm and feigned doubt as to whether the sample sent was really American tin plate. It is a significant sig-nificant fact that tho London Financial Times raises the same question that onr Now York Times and other journals which echo British sentiment have raised. We have already fully answered our home ppers, but for tjie benefit of our English contemporaries wo will repeat. re-peat. The piece of tin sent to tho Financial Fi-nancial Times was made at Dernier, Fa., by the United States Iron and Tin Plato company, and this is what Mr. V. C. Cronemeyer, the president of that company, com-pany, says of it: "Tho material used for those plates has been produced from American iron ore; was first tnrned into pig metal in American Ameri-can blast furnaces; American steel works converted tho pig metal into steel bil-I bil-I lets; the steel billets were rolled into thin sheets of steel; tho latter were pickled, or cleaned of scale with American acid, and all the work was done by American workmen work-men (that is, workmen either born in this country or who have by their own free will chosen America as their home). "The only ingredient contained in those plates which is of foreign origin is tho tin nsed for coating (from 2Jto5 pounds of foreign tin to every 100 pounds of American steel plates), "During the last ten years tho explanation explana-tion that the so called tin plates are not made from tin ore, but from iron ore, and only washed with a light coating of tin, has been so often made by tho American Amer-ican press generally that any person who yet talks about tho impossibility of making tin plato for want of the tin ore reveals gross ignorance. Tho bulk of tin used by English manufacturers is imported by them from the Dutch East Indies or from Australia, and wo can import im-port it from there as well. "es, the tin plates are as genuinely American as tho tin plates imported from Wales aro Welsh." This showing is good enough in itself, but we can go still further. In tho city of Chattanooga a few weeks ago they were celebrating tho successful manufacture manu-facture in tho south of basic steel from their ores and from their coal, and on tho banquet table for one of tho courses every guest had a tin plato mado out of their basic steel and coated with the tin ores that came from the Black hills, made in American shops in St. Louis, by American workmen, and it was as good as can be made anywhere in tho world. Neither the London Finaucial Times, the New York Times, nor any other journal at home or ubroad, which devotes columns iu trying to belittle American industries, can question any longer that we are making tin plate, all of which is American material and labor. la-bor. We do not claim to be supplying tho market. It is over two months yet before the new duty on tin plates will po into effect, and twenty months before be-fore our bar tin will bo protected. We do claim, however, that we will soon be making so much American tin plato that the $20,000,000 which we have been annually sending to Great Britain will remain at home, and our workmen will be correspondingly benefited. We ad-I ad-I vise our Free-trade contemporaries to drop tho tin plate qnestion and try to propound some harder problem. |